This was my third try to run the Victoria parkrun and I’m glad to report that I was successful. Katrina & I arrived 20mins early so I had enough time to have a bit of a warm up.

I needed to run at least 1.07 mile to complete my 2015 miles in 2015. I met Neal half way round and we ran our warm up together. I assume he has been reading these reports as he didn’t come up with any excuses today about how many miles he has done and how trashed his legs are! But he was still deciding what tactic to go for.

We met a few friends before the start including Matt Williamson. I don’t think Matt has done any parkruns before so I was looking forward to seeing how he got on.

The course is basically 3 loops of the park. It is pretty flat but there was a bit of a head wind on the far side of the loop.

I started not too far from the front with Neal and I spent most of the first loop catching and overtaking runners until I settled into a position running with two other guys.

I could see Donald P not too far ahead on the first loop and then as we went round the pond for the second time I couldn’t see him ahead so I assume he either ran very fast or had to stop (I found out later it was the later … he needed the loo!!).

I felt I was running strongly on the second loop and one of the two runners I was with dropped off the pace.

On the third lap I was working hard to stay with the other runner and he pulled away from me over the final half of the 3rd loop. I definitely felt I was slowing a bit which my splits confirmed.

Two runners caught me with less than half a mile to go but thankfully neither of them was Neal! He finished 9 seconds behind me. I finished 19th in 19:39 which I was happy with.

My splits and HR graph …

Katrina had a good run finishing 88th in 23:50 and even higher when you sort by age graded percentage …..

I was interested to see that I had a higher percentage than Matt!! The thing is Matt will go a lot faster whereas I’m not sure I can go much quicker!!

As we were chatting at the end a guy called Gavin came over and thanked me for my blog! Gavin has a place for the Highland Fling next year has been following my blog over the past couple of years.

After the run we went for a hot chocolate and toasted tea cake with Neal & Caroline. Caroline thought it was very funny that both Neal & I had the same hoodies …

Once home I went swimming with Laura, Jo & Seth. It was really fun watching 4 month old Seth in the water.

With many others I’ll be following Marco as he runs his latest 24hr race and Fionna Ross who is doing the 12hr race in Barcelona. After 4hrs 35mins Marco is in 4th place and hopefully going well and Fionna is 2nd overall and 1st lady.